A community colliding ... The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is set in the hot summer of 1976

One of my writer friends has given me a horror of the kind of book that begins: “Something happened on a particular day. I know it was that particular day because … ” Like salted caramel ice cream or pulled pork, it has become very fashionable, and now it’s been pointed out to me, I’ve begun to see it everywhere. So I wasn’t predisposed to like Joanna Cannon’s debut The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, as her first two sentences read: “Mrs Creasy disappeared on a Monday. I know it was a Monday, because it was the day the dustbin men came …”

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Which makes it all the more impressive that, despite this, I found the first chapter of this novel to be one of the best, most lively and funny openings I’ve read in ages. It’s set in the famously hot summer of 1976 and narrated by 10-year-old Grace, and the first 30 or so pages skate along on her charm, her oblique moments of perception, and her humorous observations: “Remington padded into the kitchen. He used to be a Labrador, but he’d become so fat, it was difficult to tell.”

Meanwhile, the central mystery of the novel is being set up – the disappearance of the neighbour Mrs Creasy. There are several other mysteries in this novel, including the brief kidnapping of a baby, a case of arson, and what a group of neighbours did nine years previously – something they discuss frequently without ever letting the reader get an idea of what exactly it was. In order to explore all this, Grace’s story is interspersed with six other perspectives, giving the reader insight into the inner lives of some of the secretive neighbours. These include Dorothy, who is bullied by her sinister husband, Eric, still grieving for his dead former wife; Brian, whose development seems to have been stunted by an overbearing mother; and John Creasy, husband of the missing woman. As in an Agatha Christie novel, each character is concealing a secret, but not necessarily the one you suspect.

Cannon obviously has an interest in the everyday tragedies of ordinary people, individuals mired in grief and open to making life-changing errors, and she makes their disappointments real and painful for the reader, though tempered with levity. Dorothy, contemplating the way her husband’s anger makes her forget her words, remembers the times he has aggressively suggested the nouns she searches for: “Cuddly toy, she said one day, to make him laugh. But Harold didn’t laugh. Instead, he stared at her as though she had walked into the conversation uninvited, and then he had closed the back door very quietly … somehow the quietness filled a room even more than the anger.”

For some readers there may be too many ordinary misfortunes; too many enigmas in the one book. Each section is filled with evocative descriptions of dusty suburban streets, middle-class front rooms and the British Legion club. People drink Babycham and read Jackie, watch The Good Life and promise children bowls of Angel Delight. At first the atmosphere is compelling, but with each change in point of view, and the introduction of yet another secret to be revealed, the impact of the book lessens. I became impatient for the reveal(s) and frustrated by the intervening chapters. And with so many revelations, it’s inevitable that the ending feels rather rushed.

Having said that, this is a novel to be savoured rather than hurried through. It’s a book about a community and the way the members of that community collude with occasionally disturbing consequences: imagine Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, set in 1970s English suburbia. In The Trouble with Goatsand Sheep nothing and nobody is perfect, and the explanations aren’t too neat, either; instead, the various characters’ histories come together to form a vibrant whole, reminding me both of Carys Bray’s brilliantly profound A Song for Issy Bradley, with its parallel narratives, and of Kate Atkinson’s wry and clever Jackson Brodie novels. Full of humour and careful depictions of everyday suffering, this is not so much a mystery novel as an investigation into the wealth of secrets and heartbreak that even the most commonplace street can hold.

• Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing is published by Penguin. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon (Harper Collins Paperbacks, £12.99). To order a copy for £10.39, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.